Truth is, as a scooter rider, I’ve experienced the way people will hurl a “get a helmet” at you if you so much as pull fifteen feet up the street for a better parking space, without your helmet on.

I’d like to suggest that we live in a world where there is not enough good communication, not enough listening, and where people feel like their opinions don’t matter. So when they see someone with a helmet off, it’s their big chance to be heard.

I may, in my day, have yelled the same thing, myself.

Found in a thrift store in Austin. Still fresh after 3000 years.

I want to pull back a second and say, of course – there are times when people need to be told what’s what. There’s a great quote from the Mishna – I’m getting Jewish nerdy here – which is a 2000 year old instruction manual in the form of a series of arguments.

Q: “From where do we derive that one who sees something wrong about his friend should rebuke him? A: It is said (in the Torah), ‘One should surely rebuke.’

Q: How do we know that one should continue to rebuke [if his first attempt does not achieve the desired results]? A: We are taught this from the [odd grammar that one is to rebuke] no matter what.

So, yes. When it’s important, rebuke. But what if it’s some unimportant, antiquated fashion faux pas?

Picture taken in OCTOBER! Oooooh. Risky!

In style, I would maintain, there are a few rules which need to be thrown out. And yet, when I break one of them, the same guy who yells, “get a helmet” also tells me which sartorial rule I’m breaking, as if rebuking me for some moral flaw.

I take umbrage with this. So here are my top five rules you shouldn’t worry about breaking.